WOULD YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT
YOURSELF AND HOW YOU
CAME TO KNOW YOUR SPIRITUAL TEACHER ADI DA SAMRAJ?
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Before I start, I want to mention that most of what I say or write about
my understanding of non-humans is rooted in my relationship of service and
devotion to my Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj. So in sharing my thoughts
and feelings here I'm not attempting to be an authority. There is still so
much about Adi Da and His Spiritual Work with the non-humans that I don't
understand. I'm just beginning. I truly hope that others will find this
interview interesting and useful to reflect upon. I can be contacted
directly through the Fear-No-More Zoo website @ http://zoo.adidam.org with
further questions or inquiries.

I was born in Papua New Guinea in
1963, where I was raised on a coffee plantation in the Western Highlands.
Among other things, my father was a naturalist and one of the trustees and
patrons of the then world-renowned Baiyer River Bird of Paradise
Sanctuary. So I was fortunate to have a lot of contact with all kinds of
animals from an early age. I also did a lot of bush walking and caving in
and around the valley we lived in, going with various native friends and
sometimes alone.

Adi Da Samraj made direct
Spiritual contact with me while I was still a boy living in New Guinea. I
came to understand this only in hindsight. I clearly remember at least
several specific occasions where I was drawn beyond myself in ecstatic and
revolutionary infusions of His Graceful Presence. Years later I realized
that He was the Source of those childhood experiences. Several of them
stand out... sitting under the Mt. Hagen school house sheltering from the
afternoon rain, waiting for one of my parents to pick me up, I was getting
more and more frustrated. They were running late. At a certain point,
however, my mind and body became pervaded by a forceful and expanding
sense of myself as energy, not limited to form, inclusive of everything.
It was an utterly happy and timeless realization of a fuller reality than
my bodily boyhood existence. And it was also a completely familiar
experience and state, tangibly more real than anything I'd known, although
there was absolutely no reference for it. When my mother finally arrived I
walked over to the car and got in, not saying anything about what had just
happened, as it had passed by now and there was no longer anything I could
say to her about it. Another time I remember standing in my bedroom
looking into my face and eyes in the mirror, intensely asking myself,
"Who am I? Who am I?" over and over again. I was just drawn to
do this, compelled, and I did it often. On this particular occasion, the
questioning penetrated deeper and deeper into and beyond who I thought I
was. At some point my only self-perception was that of a minute point in
an infinite blissful space of spiraling colors of light. My legs must have
given out on me because when I "came to" I was sprawled on the
floor. I sat up, collecting myself, breathing... and I was left with the
inarguable understanding that I did not know who I was or what I was, and
I didn't know what anything is. And I knew that nobody knew what he or she
or anything is. No matter how much anyone seems to know about something or
about themselves they can never know what they are or what anything IS. I
was suddenly completely aware of this Truth, and utterly relieved in that
moment of any need for anything whatsoever. Another time at around ten
years of age I was standing on a bridge above one of the huge swirling
muddy highland rivers. My family was at one end of the bridge, back where
the car was parked on the roadside. An incredible sense of frustration
welled up in me. I looked at my family, at the river and the mountains.
The sun beat down severely. I felt completely lost, empty, devoid of life,
of heart, utterly contracted upon myself with no way out of it. Everything
felt so massy, solid, heavy. I felt trapped, and beyond help of any kind.
I felt utterly, inescapably, mortal. There were other similar experiences,
but these three stand out now. And as I got older they gradually stopped
occurring. At first I found myself intensely yearning for that quality and
Presence I'd come to know through these experiences, but as I got older
still all of it became so distant that I almost completely doubted that it
had ever happened.

I first became aware of Adi Da
Samraj back when His name was still "Bubba Free John". I picked
up a book of His Teachings on diet and health. It was named, "The
Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace". I'd been reading a lot about diet and
health, vegetarianism, cleansing and so forth; some pretty extreme points
of view that after a while kind of had me freaked out. But here in Adi
Da's book I found the most balanced, economic, and realistic point of view
toward food and diet that I had ever read. As I poured over the pages, I
noticed a background section about Adi Da that described him as an
American-born Spiritual Teacher. That was it! I put the book back on the
shelf and moved on. Real Spiritual Teachers did not come from the United
States, but only from India and Asia, or somewhere far away... my reaction
was curiously strong. But later, walking by that shelf again on my way to
the checkout counter with a small armload of other books, my hand went out
and plucked The Eating Gorilla from the shelf. I bought it despite myself.
Regardless of my first reaction to Adi Da, I just had to have this book,
which exuded the quality of a full, rounded, juicy fruit.

That afternoon, six pages into
the book, I sat bolt upright in astonishment. I couldn't believe what I'd
found (or what had found me!) ... I whispered aloud to myself, not really
even knowing what I was saying, "I wrote this book! This is ME
speaking!" Everything in me rushed at this moment. It was as if my
own heart and life had spilled out onto the pages and I was recognizing
myself in the Words I was reading. But more than that, I knew without a
doubt that the author, this man Bubba Free John, knew me better than I
did. And I knew that He was the one who had contacted and instructed me as
a boy. Its hard to conceive, and harder to describe, but in that instant I
recognized this man as my True Self, as the Divine, Awake and Present, in
human form. Not religious, but Real. Just damn Real. I didn't even believe
in religion. I still don't really. Although that moment irrevocably and
positively changed my life, I still spent the next four years resisting it
with all my might.

Why didn't I just go for it and
go be with Him? Well, because it was so real I guess, and I just wasn't
ready for that. I threw myself intensively into rock-climbing as an
alternative focus. After four or five years of doing a LOT of climbing, of
being obsessed with rock-climbing, I woke up in my tent one morning and I
knew it was over. I couldn't go on climbing anymore. It was done. I knew
it wouldn't make me happy, couldn't fulfill me. Things in my life got
really bad, difficult, nothing worked. I even tried to commit suicide. It
was a pretty lame attempt, and didn't succeed luckily. I remember standing
in my frustration one day, standing in the water after holding myself
under to try to drown myself. I punched the water and groaned, "If
life can get this bad, I must go to Adi Da Samraj!" Within about six
months, I had made my formal approach to Adi Da Samraj, accepting Him as
my Spiritual Master for life. Thus began my conscious embrace of this
unique relationship.

I'll include a brief bio on Adi
Da Samraj at this point. (For a fuller biography of Adi Da please visit
the beautiful web pages of the Adidam Website @ http://adidam.org/gateway/AdiDa/WhoHeIs/home.htm)

Adi Da Samraj was born in Long
Island New York in 1939. The ordeals and adventures of His life as a baby,
a young boy, and a teenager were informed by a Profound Spiritual
Intuition and Impulse to Realize the Very Divine, and to Save the world.
Even as a small boy He spoke of this. Much of Adi Da's life story is
recorded in His Spiritual Autobiography, "The Knee Of
Listening". One of Adi Da's daughters was once asked by her famous
Indian music teacher whether Adi Da, as a Divine Realizer, considers
Himself to be God? She replied by saying that Adi Da would probably
respond to such a question by saying, "There is ONLY God!"

Something that Adi Da once wrote
before He began to formally teach people confirmed to me the unusual depth
of this extraordinary, and not yet well enough known, Spiritual Master. In
His early 30's, not long after His Divine Re-Awakening, in the midst of a
series of short essays, He wrote, "So long as there is anyone or
anything that has not Understood, I have not Understood. Even So, I am the
Heart." I read this passage as an expression of His utter commitment
and intimacy with everything...

Adi Da's first Teacher was not a
human being, but a cat whom He named Robert. They lived together on the
beach in Tunitas, California, in the mid 1960's. About Robert, His first
Guru, Adi Da expressed the following; "Robert himself was nothing
less to me than my best friend and mentor. He was more, not less, than
human to me.... all of his ways seemed to me an epitome of the genius of
life... and I loved him as deeply as the universe itself... I recognized
that Robert had been my Teacher in the wilderness. He had filled my eye
and owned a thread of attention in my heart. I knew him and he knew me.
Nothing could replace that state of life or console its absence. I treated
him in death like a saint. I had him cremated, and I kept his ashes."

Many years later, at The Mountain
Of Attention Sanctuary, Adi Da created and developed a remarkable Sacred
Site which He named Holy Cat Grotto. A bronze statue of Robert was placed
on the low cliff above Holy Cat Grotto and Robert's ashes were
ceremonially installed there also. Adi Da has said that it was Robert who
gave Him the name "Da".

Adi Da Samraj has been moved to
give up His life to the wild possibility of inspiring the development of a
completely new human culture that would also allow for the full embrace of
all of the non-human cultures as well. He said that one of His intentions
and purposes is to make us all sensitive to the fact that everything is
conscious -- walls, fans, rocks, plants, moving creatures, the weather,
water, the earth itself... everything. Anyone can refer to His many
writings and Source texts to find out more about the heart of His
Teachings.

He works in mysterious ways. He
recently made an aside comment that He did not really want to be known as
a religious figure but as a Sacred Artist. He is a Free Man who stands
Free in the midst of a world of bewildered and apparently trapped humans,
some of whom are beginning to understand Him, and many who still do not.
He wants this Freedom for everyone. He is not intending to do less than
this. His life is a paradox in many ways, so that, as He once wrote,
Understanding will become the only possibility... To a group of people one
evening many years ago He described how when He sits with people, or hangs
out with them, He doesn't see a bunch of separated individuals suffering
their asses off! Rather, what He sees is only the Very Divine Itself. He
finished by saying He also notices that we tend to live as if we are not
Free, and that this is what moves Him to Teach. In one of His main texts
of Instruction He writes: "My devotee is the God I have come to
serve." And it's true to say that His Blessing, and Impulse to
Embrace, extends to everyone and everything...

HOW HAS YOUR LIFE CHANGED AS A
RESULT OF MEETING HIM?
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This is a good question. My first answer, which might surprise you, is
that it hasn't changed my life. This is such an ordinary part of my life
now. It's just been a natural flow of inevitabilities I'd say... Nothing
really changed. Things just progress... Not that it wasn't, and isn't,
difficult, but it's mostly been wonderful, and an easeful, pleasurable,
and happy process. Around Adi Da life is always changing in any case,
shifting, moving. It's like being in a broad swift river. You have to be
responsible enough in your life to stay afloat, and occasionally you pull
off into a tranquil eddy or something (sometimes a stinky mud-hole full of
crocs!), but you're in the river and the river is moving. And the further
you go along with it the more you begin to understand that you are not
different from the river... and surrender becomes more and more your
natural state. I often feel, however, like I'm trying to get out of a deep
mud-hole somewhere, rather than flowing freely out in mid-stream.

Rather than "changed",
I'd say my life has been returned to itself from an otherwise inevitable
course of self-possession and self-destruction. Although my early life in
New Guinea was rich and varied and informed by ecstatic visions and
blisses that gave me an unusual humor for some years, my teenage years in
Australia were increasingly bereft of the signs of real life. Finally I
was, well, collapsed, high up there on the river bank, baking in the hot
sun and dust. There was no God anymore (or ever it seemed). No life worth
anything. After searching like an insane man for something True that I
could hold onto, I finally gave up. And I gave up increasingly until one
day, Adi Da "smacked" me in the head again, reminding me of what
was more real than my mortal presumptions and fears. What had become so
faint a memory for years was now alive again suddenly. And my life now is
essentially a process of deep healing and remembering -- understanding and
transcending all the ways I have, as an ego, of squashing the Divine out
of everything. What was so Gracefully given to me as a child, was never in
fact withdrawn as I'd imagined it had been. Instead, I had pushed it aside
without knowing (yet somehow intentionally also), and squashed it. And so,
now, there is simply this necessary, interesting and happy ordeal of
self-understanding until the point where... I remember Adi Da saying
something like, "When you can stand beside me and take a deep
breath... completely without fear, not separate from anything, then you
will be Free". These are not exactly His words, but something like
it...

On a practical level I could
describe my life now as one in which relationship is required (and
increasing responsibility for relationship), rather than the activity of
avoidance. Adi Da described this once as the gesture of the open hand
rather than the clenched fist. Living more and more as the natural
presumption of "I love you", rather than in the reaction of
"you don't love me". This might sound a bit abstract, but it's
actually very ordinary, which is why it is so real. Sometimes it's a very
stark confrontation with one's tendencies...

HOW DID ADI DA COME TO CREATE FEAR-NO-MORE ZOO?
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All through Adi Da's childhood He loved animals. The woods near His
parent's home were among His favorite places. I've already mentioned that
His first actual Spiritual Teacher was a cat named Robert. In 1974 one of
Adi Da's devotees gave Him a beautiful exotic pheasant on His Birthday. A
large enclosure was built for the bird. More pheasants were acquired,
other animals too. This was the beginning of Fear-No-More Zoo. It was
pretty humble for many years. My sense of it is that Adi Da planted the
seed of Fear-No-More pretty much right at the beginning of His Teaching
Work and He has left it to grow from out of our human response to what we
gradually and increasingly understand the Zoo to be about. Here and there
He nudges it along by example or through Instruction, but otherwise He's
left us to realize the importance of it. When I first started serving in
the Zoo I would wonder why He hadn't just developed it in its fullness
from the start. But now I understand that it must be developed from a
human response, that it must develop from our energy (in response to His
Vision) if it is going to be real and truly effective as a means of
serving the change of consciousness that is so much needed.

The name, "Fear-No-More
Zoo", surprises some people. Some react to it because it has the word
"zoo" in it, and so how could this be a good thing? Aside from
the connotations of concrete and steel cages, "zoo" is just a
word taken from "zoological", which refers to the study of
animals. There is something else about the use of the word Zoo in this
case... Adi Da works Spiritually with the patterns of the world, to Bless
and Purify them. By adding the word Zoo to Fear-No-More He is connecting
His Work, in psycho-physical terms, with all zoos everywhere at the level
of the "core pattern" of things. He is Embracing all zoos, and
all the animals in those zoos, and through His Spiritual Regard He Blesses
them. And the natural growth of Fear-No-More Zoo itself, we feel, will
serve to raise the consciousness of zoos in general around the world.
Fear-No-More Zoo, while seemingly located in a number of specific places,
is not limited to only those locations. The Vision of
"Fear-No-More" is more rightly understood as a point of view, or
a Spiritual disposition, that is potentially applicable and effective in
any situation where humans and non-humans interact.

The "Fear-No-More" part
of the name is instructive in that it points to the animals' need for
safety... that they must be cared for in such a way that they are
protected from unnecessary fear, which in turn provides them with a life
that supports their Contemplation. "Fear-No-More" also directly
points to the non-humans' Spiritual Contemplation, which is where the
disposition of "Fear-No-More" is made real. And, lastly,
"Fear-No-More" is a direct instruction and calling to all humans
that we too should become Spiritual Contemplatives, transcend chronic,
separative fear... to not feel threatened anymore and to stop threatening
everything...

Adi Da once talked about how
animals like to be around Contemplatives, Spiritual Contemplatives. They
like to be in places where people Contemplate. And they do not like to be
exposed to people who poke and stare at and disturb them with
insensitivity or busyness. Even wild animals are attracted to, and put at
ease, by humans who Contemplate, and who are to one degree or another
combined with the Divinely Spiritual Process. Think of yogis hanging out
with tigers and lions, shamans in Africa with elephants, the great saints
and sages who could simply walk among the animals... Such stories may be
somewhat exaggerated by now, but many are based on actual real events that
were, I'm sure, quite ordinary, beautiful and natural when they occurred.

DID YOU WORK WITH ANIMALS BEFORE YOU MET ADI DA?
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As I mentioned earlier, I've been associated with animals in some way or
another from an early age. I was very dedicated and devoted to them as a
younger boy in New Guinea. But gradually that dedication was neglected,
ignored, and later, as a teenager in Australia, I became pretty abstracted
from them (and everything else), even while I had various pets. After high
school, for a period of time, I worked at a native fauna reserve in
Queensland. The very well known and respected naturalist who ran the place
wanted me to stay on there and apprentice to him, but it just wasn't what
I wanted to do at that time. I wasn't ready yet to work with animals, and
that place just wasn't where I wanted to settle...

WOULD YOU COMMENT ON YOUR WORK AT FEAR-NO-MORE ZOO? HOW HAS YOUR LIFE
CHANGED AS A RESULT OF WORKING WITH THE ANIMALS AT THE ZOO?
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When I arrived at Fear-No-More Zoo in 1993, I still had never settled down
for very long in anything. I had a well-developed pattern of moving on
when responsibilities loomed. I was still socially fearful and inverted
(probably always will be! ha!). Adi Da made it clear that He wanted me to
stay on here for a "good long while". Well, I went through three
years of struggling with my tendency to leave and return to Australia...
It was agonizing. The main thing that kept me in place during the most
difficult times were the animals. I couldn't leave them. Like it or not I
was gradually relocating my responsibility, rediscovering my life's
intention and service. Adi Da pressed me into my resistance, held me in
place with my fears about it all, and required me to deal with myself.

As a boy in New Guinea, my
withdrawal from my animal friends and companions was a reaction to the
inevitable deaths I would endure as some of them passed on. Finally, I
found another home for all of them I was done with that. Their mortality
became too difficult for me. And then my older brother died, and my father
withdrew emotionally from my siblings and me. And I therefore withdrew
further into myself, became kind of deadened, cold, abstracted. And my
life became a pattern of avoiding responsibility, of avoiding life and
love and death. In a way I had become dead myself, and lost...

Then, after being involved with
the group of Adi Da's devotees in Australia for a number of years, I
finally somehow made my way, or was drawn, to Fear-No-More Zoo, and My
Spiritual Teacher gave me His trust in these animals. I was horrified by
this appointment at first! But this was just the medicine I needed, and I
became more and more sure of this as time passed. When the several animals
in New Guinea died, I withdrew inward, ran away. I had never told any of
this to Adi Da, but now I had instructions from Him that if and whenever
an animal died at Fear-No-More Zoo I had to communicate with Him
immediately and give a full accounting of how it happened and how it would
never happen again. He also gave me the admonition that no animals could
die except of old age!

Out of His own Love and care for
the non-humans, as well as His love and expectation of me, He was
incredibly fierce with me when an animal did die. In my second year at the
Zoo there seemed to be a spate of deaths for some reason. And I had to
write to Him every time. And each time, knowing exactly what was going on
and where I was at, Adi Da knew precisely what to say to get me to feel
and see my limitations and my withhold of energy from life. To make the
point clearer He began referring to me as "the animal killer",
"that zoo keeper", "him", "that person". One
time He said "Stuart doesn't mean to kill animals but there is
something he doesn't understand about himself that may be contributing to
these deaths". Years earlier He had told me that in my abstraction
from things I was already a "killer". I gradually understood
that in order to become abstracted from anything you must first, or
simultaneously, deny the very existence of life in that one. In every one
of Adi Da's Skillful "Kicks", if I looked closely enough, there
was also always a deeply penetrating and Loving Kiss and Embrace, and in
this sphere I gradually started coming around, coming alive again, feeling
myself and others once more.

Then one day, due to a
miscalculation on my part, a chameleon died. I went into a deep and numb
despair. I had come to the end, I thought. I decided that I had only one
of two choices to make. Either to really commit everything in me to this
and really begin to do it, or I should just leave, go back to Australia,
go back to rock-climbing or something. I struggled for two days before
deciding to stay on and give my life to developing whatever this
Fear-No-More Zoo would become... I moved into the Zoo itself for a while,
lived there in a shed in the emu enclosure, and I began to rebuild almost
everything about the place, and I'm still doing that. I don't live with
the emus anymore, although I sometimes wish I did... they're quite special
birds.

I am incredibly grateful to all
the animals, those who are alive and to the few who died. All of us will
die at some point. Each one taught me something crucial. They are all
teachers of different things. Ultimately, as Adi Da said once,
"everything is trying to be a revelation to you". But you have
to be ready to notice and listen, and make changes on the basis of what
becomes obvious.

My work at Fear-No-More Zoo is
now lifelong. My work for the benefit of all non-humans is lifelong. I
intend that this service, under Adi Da's Guidance and with His Blessing,
become a positive and benign influence in the world, further imparting the
awareness to humans that the non-humans are spiritual beings, no more or
less deserving of love, respect, and right care than we are -- that, at
heart, we are all equal. I trust in this as my best and most humble
intention. This is what my life is about now.

I want to make a further point
here that I feel is quite important... Fear-No-More Zoo, through to this
time, has only ever been staffed by non-professional people. No staff
vets, or zoologists, or formally trained animal caretakers have ever
worked here, at least not for very long. There was a vet here for a short
time once, and a biologist helped out in various ways for a while, but
otherwise its been basically very ordinary people whom Adi Da has been
working with in His Fear-No-More Zoo. This is partly because professional
animal types haven't showed up around Adi Da yet. One of Fear-No-More
Zoo's purposes is to positively inform and transform the ordinary human
being's relationship to the non-humans. We are not about becoming the best
professional animal sanctuary around (although that would be good too),
but rather, Fear-No-More Zoo has a self-given role of physically, as well
as psycho-physically, transforming mankind's relationship to the non-human
worlds. Working Spiritually, to positively effect a deepening in all
humans, Adi Da has only had ordinary people to work with. This is how it
has had to be, it appears. It's about Blessing everyone, from the ordinary
on up, not just those who seem to hold knowledge, position, or power.
Fear-No-More Zoo welcomes the services of vets and professionals in the
animal world to further our endeavors. Such people and their skills are
very heartily welcomed when they come along. But it is, fundamentally, the
"person", not the professional, whom Adi Da and the animals are
interested in. The basic heart-relationship is senior to everything else,
because from there everything else good and real is possible.

Oh, I also want to say this... In
this service I've often felt, or intuited, myself in a process that seems
related to everyone else, that Adi Da has been working, even very
deliberately, with everyone else through me -- in the area, particularly,
of our right and Sacred understanding of non-humans... When He would call
me "the animal killer" and so on, I often sensed that He was
actually addressing all humans in general (as well as me specifically),
that He was Compassionately "speaking" to that pattern in humans
that is destroying everything. We are all "the animal killer",
the killers of fish and birds and trees, and living places... In, and
through, the dynamic of my ordinary human service to the animals at
Fear-No-More Zoo I feel that Adi Da is Working to heal the relationships
of all humans to the non-humans. I don't feel that this makes me special
or unique, as this is how He Works in the many areas of His Blessing
Impulse, and with everyone around Him. I trust that what is being healed
and awakened in me will help to serve everything else...

Another Spiritual Master, Sai
Baba of Shirdi (early 20th century, India), had a bag of coins which he
would use to work with and through his devotees. Mostly in private, he
would take the coins and move them about, handle and rub them, while
quietly mumbling peoples' names and various things about them. He would
use these coins to relate to and work Spiritually with his devotees. Adi
Da has indicated to His devotees that we are the "Coins" in His
Blessing Work with the world. Likewise the Sanctuaries, and the various
Holy Sites He has created in them, are Coins for His World Blessing.

OF THE ANIMALS AT THE ZOO DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE OR SPECIAL
RELATIONSHIP WITH ONE OR SEVERAL OF THE ANIMALS?
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Cinnabar, the red panther chameleon who died, was a very close friend. He
was an extraordinary individual. Very much a teacher. His passing changed
my life. He gave me the force to begin to take my life back. Jingle Baba
the Bactrian camel and I go way back it seems. He and I, together, began
the regeneration of the Zoo some years back. His depth and force of life
have influenced and informed much of what I do now. Definitely a partner
and mentor. I have to mention Quiet Pete, the conure, also, or he might
get quite upset! I have a great love for Pete. He's taught me more than a
few things. Bebe, the Colobus monkey matriarch of our group of Black and
White Colobus in Hawaii, is a sublime and intense wisdom-bearer for her
family and for the humans who get to know her. And Daji Megan
Fear-No-More, a now deceased German shepherd who's grave sits at the
entrance to the Zoo... I sometimes sit by his graveside to meditate and
receive guidance, both from Adi Da Samraj, and from Daji Megan. There is a
very powerful force at his grave, which time and again informs my active
work and service. But really, all the animals are pretty special.

HOW DO THE ANIMALS COME TO THE ZOO?
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Somehow they "find" their way here. Often when Adi Da suggests,
or asks, for a certain type of animal, there is an actual individual out
there whom He knows and feels, a devotee of His whom He wishes to bring
into His Company. When we locate and visit those individuals on farms or
in shops, they always (almost always!) give us some sign that they want to
come with us.

Sometimes I will come across an
individual animal whom I feel very clearly should be, or is intended to
be, living at Fear-No-More Zoo. I once met a very cool toucan who had a
strong connection to Adi Da, unmistakably so. Bringing him to Fear-No-More
Zoo would have involved the building of a suitable enclosure and so forth
and, at that point, I didn't think I'd be able to pull it together. The
very next day Adi Da asked about us having toucans! I knew He was talking
about the one I had just met, even though I'd said nothing about the bird.
Two years later, when I finally went to acquire this bird (he'd been for
sale for quite a long time) someone else had just purchased him... I have
some regret about that.

Some animals are offered to us.
Some wander in. Some I propose to Adi Da for His consideration. Some are
born here. Although there are of course no distinctions between beings,
some individuals have certain functions, and some of those who
"fit" the pattern of Adi Da's Blessing Work get drawn to Him
somehow.

Adi Da regards the animals of
Fear-No-More Zoo as His intimate devotees and friends. They are also His
direct and tangible links to all other non-humans; they link Him to their
native regions and ecosystems also. He invests a lot of Work and Blessing
in each of them individually, as He does with His human devotees. Speaking
in Spiritual and psycho-physical terms Adi Da has indicated that the more
we develop and rightly serve the Holy Site of Fear-No-More Zoo, the
greater will be its benign and healing effects in the world for the sake
of all beings, human and non-human alike. "The more I get to do what
I intend there the more you will observe it," He said in 1996.

Also in 1996, in a conversation
with a small lizard in Hawaii, Adi Da made clear His Sacred commitment to
all non-humans by Vowing to the inquiring lizard that He would protect the
non-humans from the insensitivity of humans. How can a single individual
make such a far-reaching vow, one might ask...great Spiritual Master or
not? Only through the sympathetic response of all His human devotees, and
ultimately through the feeling and intelligent response of all humans, can
this ever be achieved. The Divine is not in charge of things as a parent
figure or the captain of a ship. All the Wisdom in the world can be Given,
as it has already, but only the timely response and change of action on
the part of humans (particularly in this moment) will make the difference
in life that is called for.

STANDARD INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
***If it feels appropriate, it might be nice here to answer for yourself
and also make a statement about each question about what Adi Da might say
or has said about such topics or perhaps quote from his writings.

DO YOU BELIEVE THAT ANIMALS HAVE SOULS?
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Clearly, like us, animals are most certainly Spiritual beings. The only
reason why this wouldn't be clear to anyone has to be that they are
unaware that they themselves are ultimately Spiritual rather than only
physical in nature. I try not to view animals, or people, in terms of them
having souls. To me having "souls" still describes separation.
There is something true enough in the soul description, but I feel it is a
stepped down idea of the Ultimate Reality that all are One. The concept of
soul bodies is more unifying than that of gross bodily egoity alone, but
souls are, by their definition, conceived as being separate entities
still.

There is One Divine Being, living
and breathing and pervading everything. And everything that is apparently,
and more or less, individual, is simply a stepped down modification of
Reality that is yet to be transcended.

In 1994 Adi Da spoke more on this
topic: "At heart, a human being is not the slightest bit different
from the reptiles, the birds, the former dinosaurs, the elephants, the
plants, the trees, the wind, the sky, the microbes. Apart from their
function in conditionality, all beings are the same. Human beings are not
uniquely to be Saved.

"It is not that only human
beings are full of 'soul' and everything else should be chopped up and
eaten for lunch! If you examine beings other than the human, feel them,
are sensitive to them, enter directly into relationship with them, you
discover that they are the same - and not just the somewhat bigger ones...
but the mosquitoes, too.

"At heart, human beings are
manifesting a potential that is in all and that is inherent in conditional
existence itself. Whether this potential is exhibited or not, whether it
is made human or not, makes no difference whatsoever to the Divine
Self-Condition.

"All is One. All is the same. All equally require Divine Compassion,
Love, and Blessing, the thread of Communion with the Divine made certain
and true and directly experienced. All."

HOW DOES OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH AND TREATMENT OF ANIMALS RELATE TO OUR OWN
SPIRITUALITY AND UNFOLDMENT AS HUMAN BEINGS?
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How we relate to and treat non-humans--the environment, animals,
ecosystems, everything other than human (and each other), reflects either
our limitations or our depth in understanding. How we relate to animals is
both an individual and a cultural matter. The person who sees another
human being, or an animal, or a forest, or the ocean as a commodity, as
something to use, to take advantage of, also sees themselves that way--as
a commodity to be inflated, grown bigger, to be made more and more worthy
of other's admiration, praise, envy, survival, whatever. It's also about
gaining and maintaining power and control. In order to use or relate to
things in that way we have to first deny that those things are really
alive, or worthy of life. But even before we do that we first must deny
our own integrity as living, feeling, breathing beings... Only when we are
dead to ourselves can we then proceed to destroy other lives so easily,
which unfortunately is what we seem to be doing...

In one of His poems Adi Da wrote:

... Our living is not true. There
is a dark place in the Heart that we create to look upon hour to hour.
Therefore, nothing passes that is not death. So don't hand me this smile
of ease, or tell me your philosophy, your way of life, even how you are.
This payment of your dues is all crap. Who is not Light Itself performs
the murder of everything while we eat. So I am here to tell you everything
must change. To now there is only the perfect refusal to love.

Aware of it or not, human beings
have a natural psychic connection with the rest of the world. For the most
part, children quite readily live in that psychic realm unless it is
"trained" out of them through cultural influences. Fortunately
there are, and have been, authentic cultures which encourage children to
develop their psychic life. The psychic and heart relationship with
animals and other people helps provide a firmer ground from which a full
and healthy Spiritual life can develop. Psychic and telepathic abilities
are inherent abilities that all of us are born with. As we grow up,
depending on how and where we grow up, these abilities, or faculties
either remain active and are increasingly developed, or they are
suppressed and become latent (but never lost). In the optimum culture of
human life, these natural abilities would become consciously accessible
and developed during our childhood, just as we now learn math, or English,
or how to swim or cook. This opening of the psyche through learning how to
communicate with other life-forms is an important thing for humans to
develop (and the earlier the better), because it connects us with the life
around us in its many and varied forms. We may each be different in form
and function, but at heart we are all the same... and we are all
interconnected.

Mahatma Gandhi was quoted as
saying that the quality of a nation could be gauged by the way its people
treated animals. Others have said similar things. Adi Da once told the
Community of people associated with Him that all He had to do to read
where everyone was at in their Spiritual life was to take a quick glance
at the children and the animals...

Adi Da recently asked for the
animals of Fear-No-More Zoo to be given the opportunity to become much
more integrated with the culture of humans in our community, that it was
time for us to make this gesture collectively. He has talked at times
about how the three Sanctuaries in our community should be like great
zoological and botanical gardens wherein animals and people would be
intelligently and sensitively integrated; where the divisions between the
human and non-human cultures would mostly be dissolved, not by ignoring
them, but by transcending them in mutual Communion with the Very Divine
Who Lives as us all. This would be a part of the demonstration of the Way
that He Teaches, the Way of the Heart... admittedly still to be realized
and fully lived by us, but most definitely something that Adi Da is
Calling for, and is urgent to have in place. He told me once that
Fear-No-More Zoo, and His Blessing Work with the non-humans, as well as
humans, is a sign of the Fullness of His entire Teaching Work.

A human culture divorced from the
non-human realms, divorced from the psychic life, which is what has been
increasingly occurring over the last century, is profoundly lacking in
richness, subtlety, wisdom and depth. I've heard it said that the animals
make us human. I know what is meant by this but I would say it
differently... Our embrace of the non-human beings, our right Sacred
relationship with them, informs and makes us whole, in both body and
psyche.

All of the great and true human
cultures, and all of the great and true human beings, have always
maintained their richness and integrity through a right understanding and
relationship with this mostly non-human world within which, and from
which, we derive everything we have and everything we know...

I'd like to relate a passage here
from a talk given by Adi Da Samraj in 1996, as it fits well with what I'm
suggesting.

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Adi Da Samraj: So what do you
think about the non-humans, then, now that we've talked about it some?
Right now in the outback in Australia, aborigines, so-called aborigines,
are sitting around fires or just sitting out on the ground somewhere. And
among the things they look to observe are the non-humans in their
movements about, and the whole non-human process--the weather, the sky,
the stars, everything, observed in a rather Contemplative disposition of
openness altogether.

Among those people, like among
the Native American Indians, it is not merely believed in some heady
sense, but presumed that the non-humans are a unique display of what is
beyond the human--and are not lesser at all. They are a unique sign,
something to notice very profoundly, and to learn from and so on. There is
also the presumption that for the humans to survive they have to sometimes
kill animals or whatever for food. But even that is done in a sacred
disposition--not maliciously, but with respect and an acknowledgment of
necessity, with regret and asking for apology and expressing good will and
blessing. Something of that is in it all.

But apart from the eating's of
the non-humans, those peoples do spend a lot of time observing them,
noticing all kinds of things about them, including their survival
abilities and whatnot. But beyond that, they are viewed as direct
spirit-forms, with something instructive about them and a kind of power
even to become intimate with. Such peoples do a kind of samyama
(consideration), then, on animals. They Contemplate them to the point of
achievement of sometimes remarkable states and so on.

We were just talking about the
non-humans here in a somewhat different fashion, perhaps, in terms of them
being signs of Divine Awareness, not just representations of the invisible
world and so on--here to help humans or to be of use to them, perhaps,
somehow. Divinely Awake, in profound Contemplation--not merely of the
dream world--beyond self, forgetting the body-mind, profound
Contemplatives. So that's what we were talking about. But it still would
require the same thing of you basically that was done long ago and still.
You have to allow yourself to become sensitive to everything, everyone,
and realize that everyone is a one, not just the humans. In their
presumption they are, certainly, as alive and conscious as you, just as
self-aware in every fundamental sense. They get afraid in their bodies
when threatened, like you do. And, therefore, they are urgent with
Contemplation. They are not over-busy; or if they are busy, they're
intoxicated somehow by their song with one another, or whatever it may
be--for example the bees, and so on.

So they exercise the capability
of Divine Contemplation. They also experience psychic dimension things and
so forth--what you might call dream-world awareness. They wake, they
sleep, they dream, and they Contemplate, by relinquishing self-regard, and
even awareness relative to the body. So they go in some protected spot,
and check it out, and then zone out. And yet remarkably they retain the
ability to [snaps His fingers] in an instant, react if their territory is
interfered with or encroached upon. But given the opportunity again, you
know... they don't want to fight all day.

A lot of animals even have mock
fights--like deer and such. With their great antlers they have these
fights, in which there is no intention whatsoever to do anybody any harm
and such. Some kind of rules they've worked out about when you say you're
beaten and who you acknowledge to have won, but there's never any
intention for them to kill one another or anything in those game-battles.

So they always move to return to
free Contemplation and prefer to be as un-busy as possible. And it's not
just because they just want to lie around and relax. They forget
body-consciousness, self-consciousness, and enter into Contemplation. They
do this rather readily. Of course, they can be interfered with like human
beings can, and have a lot of trouble from human beings and the effects of
human beings. And there's even a lot of trouble in the natural world, too,
that they have to be wary of.

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In the above passage Adi Da
refers to the aborigines as "so-called aborigines". I think He
is actually pointing here to our presumption that the rest of us are not
aborigines. However displaced some of us may be we are all natives of this
planet, beings of this place. The Australian Aborigines happen to be the
longest lived continuous culture on earth, still well intact in some
cases. Westerners have generally given ourselves a convenient
"out" by forgetting our connection with the earth, relinquishing
the "aboriginal" in us by considering ourselves apart from
nature, somehow above it even. In doing so we have literally made it
possible for us to be killers, exploiters... in our abstraction from the
living, breathing world, we have actually "killed" off our
connection to the life in everything. We are abstracted from ourselves,
and our true natures, and we are abstracted from the
"everything" we dwell within. I think this is how we have been
able to become so violent and destructive.

I must add though, that there is
ultimately no right or wrong. We are all in a mysterious, beautiful, and
also often ugly process. There is no end goal, no place to arrive at after
a long journey. Life itself, which we are unavoidably a part of, is
completely open-ended. Adi Da once humorously said, "RELAX! Nothing
is under control."

Humans also deserve great praise.
We are evolving. We are a remarkable species, capable of great
intelligence, great compassion, intellect, vision, and great heart. Our
ability for technology and science, for magic and miracles seems
limitless. Something great and important is being shown back to us through
the effects of our egoic and separative inclinations over the course of
our history. We are on the threshold of a very useful Lesson for mankind.
We all will do well to consider carefully what that lesson is -- for each
of us and collectively... what exactly are we up to?

WHAT DO YOU SEE THAT WE CAN DO TO ENHANCE THE SPIRITUAL LIVES OF OUR
ANIMAL COMPANIONS AND OTHER ANIMALS?
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Its fairly simple I think. They need to feel our support for, and our
acknowledgment of, their religious life, their Spiritual nature. The
non-humans, wild and domestic, like to be around people who are
Contemplating. Clearly, and as Adi Da points out, they feel safe, and
without fear, when they are around Contemplatives, around humans who are
in states of Divine Communion.

This is an important point. The
individual and collective human psyche in these times represents a
profound presence of fear in the world... And this pattern of chronic fear
has effects, both physically and on other levels. It also makes us
literally very untrustable, no matter what our good intentions and plans
might be.

How many people have you heard
say that they trust animals more than any humans they know? Fear is a
powerful force of contraction in the world. It traps energy rather than
freeing it, releasing it. Wild nature and wild creatures have much more
free energy than humans and our domestications. It isn't surprising then
that we are so destructive of what is wilder and freer than us. Human fear
and violence is integral with the suppression of the Divine also, Who is
Utterly Free, or Freedom Itself.

So anyway, in terms of serving
the non-humans' Spirituality, whether they are animal companions or the
greater aspects of the environment, we humans need to already be living
the Contemplative life, increasingly sensitive to the Sacred. Without that
being strongly alive in us for real, either in seed form or thoroughly
realized, we are not going to be able to enhance or support anyone else's
Spiritual life.

As we ourselves grow in Divine
Contemplation the disposition of "Fear-No-More" will be
naturally communicated to everything around us, including our own bodies,
and in this the non-humans' own inherent Spirituality will be
spontaneously supported and acknowledged. Then we will see a very
different relationship developing between people and animals, and the
environment. Just as humanity's collective currently communicates a
powerful force of fear into the world, if and when we collectively become
Contemplatives ourselves, the force of that will dissolve and heal the
pattern of fear which now pervades almost everything that humans influence
in whatever ways.

In the lands of a remote New
Guinea tribe there was a large sacred forest where nothing was interfered
with by the people, and the animals there had no fear of humans. This
tribe had a true respect of the forest and its inhabitants. Normally shy
birds of paradise would display right before humans. Wallabies and possums
would approach trustingly either on the ground or along low tree branches.
The animals regarded the humans as if they were fully a part of the
forest. Several years after white man's influence arrived in the area the
forest became progressively disturbed, disrespected. The animals now ran
from people. Trees were beginning to be cut. This is a really clear
example of how human psyche can either support or destroy what is free and
sacred.

HOW DO YOU SEE TO EXPAND THE AWARENESS OF PEOPLE TO INCLUDE ANIMALS AS
SPIRITUAL BEINGS?
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Adi Da once wrote, "You can't argue someone into loving you."

I think we each have to become
"human" first. Only then are Spiritual life and Spiritual
understanding and embrace of others possible. Most of us have the
intuition on some level of a way of living and being that is greater and
fuller than our ordinary, basically under-developed life and limited
understanding of things. But that intuition, real as it is, gets
forgotten, suppressed, lost to our conscious awareness. Because few of us
live in a real Spiritual culture, our intuition of the Sacred is not
easily cultivated, nurtured or developed. In fact, the most widespread and
dominant human culture of this time (our modern western culture and its
extensions) is actively involved in denying and destroying the Sacred.
Truly Human culture cannot be found in isolation from the cultures of all
the other beings of this world. We need to be much more humble and
tolerant, and embracing, than we tend to be... and clearer.

There is no forcing people to
accept animals as Spiritual beings. Each of us can only grow into that
understanding. You can only talk about it, grow in it yourself, serve the
process in yourself and your friends perhaps. The human species' divorce
from everything else that lives is reaching a point where the results of
our own abstraction are about to teach many of us a great lesson in
Consciousness. Our destructiveness is very possibly going to become our
greatest healer and teacher. The declining environment is beginning to
force us into a global cultural and human crisis of great implications. A
great cry is beginning to go out around the world from the suppressed
heart of humanity, not to mention the non-humans. We are beginning to see
and feel the pain of what we do, have done, and have become.

I don't agree with the idea that
animals are more advanced than humans. I think this is just the flip side
of the idea that humans are more advanced than animals. Such a point of
view is possibly based in guilt and fear, and in an insecure need to place
our faith in yet another thing that seems to offer further hope in a
difficult and confusing time. And I feel that this is a childish way of
relating to non-humans and to life. If we supported, cultivated and
nurtured the Sacred in ourselves and each other, if we made the Sacred the
very basis of our lives, such ideas of advancement or limitation would
cease to be necessary. Animals can teach us a great deal. And we can teach
them things. But one is not superior to the other. To put animals up on a
Spiritual pedestal, simply because they function more readily in the
psychic realm, is a romantic, or idealistic, gesture at best. At worst it
obstructs the integrity of the real relationship that is possible between
humans and non-humans. The relationship between humans and non-humans, as
well as between humans and other humans, when rightly lived in mutual
respect, cooperation, tolerance and peace is what is Spiritualizing. The
True Teacher of both humans and non-humans is the Very Divine Itself. The
non-humans can serve to point us to that, and we can also support their
impulse to the Divine. We each enrich one another, potentially at least.

I think there is a great need for
everyone who is concerned with the environment, with protection of animals
and places, with right humane care of non-humans, to work together more.
But more than that there needs to develop a more comprehensive
appreciation of the situation we are in together. And, really, the
situation we are in is the same whether there is an environmental
emergency or not. We are all physically mortal in this place. Some can
live longer than others, but everything changes, passes. The first words,
which Adi Da formally published in 1972, read as follows, "Death is
utterly acceptable to consciousness and life. There has been endless time
of numberless deaths, but neither consciousness nor life has ceased to
arise. The felt quality and cycle to death has not modified the fragility
of flowers, even the flowers within the human body. Therefore, one's
understanding of consciousness and life must be turned to That Utter
Inclusive Truth, That Clarity and Wisdom, That Power and Untouchable
Gracefulness, That One and Only Reality, this evidence suggests. One must
cease to live in a superficial and divided way, seeking and demanding
consciousness and life in the present apparent form, avoiding and
resisting what appears to be the end of consciousness and life in
death..."

The Vision of Fear-No-More is a
gift that Adi Da created for humanity. It's a gift from Him, and it is up
to us as to how we use it. There are many conservation, environmental and
animal awareness groups functioning today, each alongside and in
competition with one another, and also alongside all of the human causes
in need of support. Most people would probably agree that what all these
causes are directed towards is essentially a world free of fear. We want
to remove fear. We all would like to be free of fear. Even those with the
worst of intentions are really only hoping to be happy, safe, secure,
without fear, free of threat. Whatever the differences in religion,
culture, ideology, race, species, we are all about the same thing in the
end. None of us is really very different from any other. We are all just
trees and plants of different kinds, all just trying to survive, to grow,
trying not to be afraid in the end if not right now...

What am I trying to say here...?
I got a bit sidetracked...

I don't think anyone has the
answers. I don't think anyone really knows what is happening or what
really needs to be done. But I do feel sure that the more we relax, accept
each other (including the non-humans), and work and serve together,
cooperate, the more we will create the real possibility in each of us for
"fearing-no-more". The Vision of Fear-No-More is universal. It
transcends not only human culture, but also all species, not by denying
any of them, but by embracing all of them at Heart. This is the gift that
Adi Da is trying to get us to accept. Clearly this is a good thing.

In such a context many things can
be done which will serve this completely open-ended Vision.

It's completely open-ended.

I think that one of our greatest
limitations is that we fix goals, mostly unattainable goals... and the
world scene, what is happening to the environment and our relationship
with non-humans, is not altogether a negative unless we fail to get the
lesson that it is now delivering to us... its not about goals,
achievements, temporal preservation... its about surrender, and, as Adi Da
says, therein lies the preservation of everything beautiful in perpetuity.
Conservation truly is about Contemplation and surrender. It's not in
fixing things. We are just little humans. We don't know the needs of the
planet, what its course is, we don't really even know for sure that we are
responsible for what we've apparently done. Are we? Really? Are we the
guilty party? Did humans do this? Or are we just conjoining with some
process much greater than ourselves? If you don't ever get the chance to
look in a mirror will you ever get see yourself...? Right now we are
looking into one gigantic mirror at ourselves and change is imminent. Just
watch...

We try to save this or that
because WE think it's important, necessary, but what do we know...?
Science is just a useful tool. It doesn't "know" anything,
really.

Conservation without surrender is
still almost as destructive as anything else we do... it's the ego trying
to survive, fighting to survive, afraid of death and living with opponents
and things to blame and destroy (even in the name of preservation)...

If the house falls down around
us, we may just finally see what is really Beautiful. But if we focus on
the falling walls and struggle fearfully to hold them up and rebuild them
we may miss seeing the Beautiful and never gain the capability of
preserving anything, because we are only ever trying to control
everything...

When all the different movements
and causes around the world find the courage to take a good look at our
underlying motives, we will see a lot more humor and class emerging in the
way we do things. And we will all become a hell of a lot more cooperative
with one another, I think.

Humans are the most fearful
species on the planet. Maybe we could all get together, at least in
Spirit, and make for a world fundamentally free of chronic fear, free of
human fear. "Fear-No-More"... Now that's a scary idea! Ha!

WOULD YOU COMMENT ON YOUR
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ANIMALS IN YOUR CARE?
WHAT HAVE THEY GIVEN YOU?
WHAT HAVE YOU GIVEN THEM?
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It's a simple relationship. I have a lot to learn from them. I live my
relationship with the animals here on the basis of my human and Spiritual
relationship with the very wild and brilliantly Compassionate Teacher, Adi
Da Samraj. I feel I have a LONG way to go in fully understanding myself. I
have still to become fully human. But this is my life, how I want to, and
intend to, live it. The animals have a strong healing and balancing effect
to the extent I combine with them. They definitely show me how to
meditate, to Contemplate, to Commune with the Very Divine Being Who lives
AS us and breathes us and IS us. The animals, our relationship together,
my deepening understanding of them, have opened me tremendously. They are
not interested in me becoming more "animal". They need me to
become more "human". They need me to be more and more fully what
I was born to be.

What have I given them? I don't
know.... a good chunk of my life I guess. I've committed my life to serve
them and to serve to protect them, under the Guidance of Adi Da Samraj,
and in alignment with the Vision of Fear-No-More. Adi Da Blessed me to
serve Him in this way, and I trust I'm doing some good. Sometimes I think
I'm not doing so great, but I always have to keep letting that go because
its not about success in the conventional way. It's a Spiritual process.
Life. Open-ended. Mindless Mystery.

I didn't think I was going to say
this much...

I love this poem by Adi Da Samraj:
I've grown used to miracles. The wonder is not whether we will be
together, me with those I'm loving, on some other side. The wonder is that
we've met and been together, loving here, in this half-made world, where
love is yet to take its hold...

I have always had a connection
and affinity for animals and plants and environments. My name,
"Stuart Camps", apparently means something like, "keeper of
the open fields", or "keeper of the animals and the open
fields" -- depends on which book you read... but my Spiritual Master
Guides (both silently and in words) everything I do. It's up to me to use
His Gifts to me wisely and intelligently, and for the good of all. This is
not about me. I am a servant. The more I realize this the more I am blown
away by the "everything" of it. And, lastly, this interview
isn't intended to be an official Adidam document in any way. It's just a
simple interview and conversation. I've spoken from my heart and as
honestly as I could.